Origins of United Russia and the Putin Presidency: The Role of Contingency in Party-System Development, The

Demokratizatsiya, Spring 2004 by Hale, Henry E

At first, Kremlin officials saw little reason to worry, since most governors were reluctant to cede leadership to a person they saw as a chief rival for revenues and investment. The critical turning point came on August 17, 1999, when Luzhkov cemented an alliance with two other major players. The most important was former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov who, at the time, was widely regarded as Russia's most popular politician since he had been premier while Russia's economy weathered the financial storm of 1998 and began to recover by 1999. Fired suddenly by Yeltsin in the spring of 1999, he had also been wooed by the Communists. With Primakov on board, other Russian governors were more willing to join the Luzhkov bandwagon. This meant the "All Russia" alliance of some of the country's most powerful (and often most autocratic) governors, including Tatarstan's Shaimiev and Bashkortostan's Rakhimov, who were sure bets to deliver large shares of the vote for their collaborators. Instantly, most pundits projected an outright victory for this "Fatherland-All Russia," with some fearing the advent of a newly one-party state in Russia.

The Kremlin Strikes Back

The fact that all of these disparate and ambitious politicians had managed to come together so forcefully sounded alarm bells throughout many Kremlin structures. Despite the Communist Party's failure to bring Primakov into their fold, even its leadership began suggesting that it could back Primakov in the presidential race should he perform sufficiently well in the Duma race and promise to give more power to the parliament, where the Communists were counting on a strong delegation.17 Most worrying to Yeltsin's coterie, however, were suggestions and even outright declarations that even the president himself could be prosecuted for wrongdoings committed during his tenure.18 This Yeltsin "court" was usually said to include powerful insiders who had effectively run the country during Yeltsin's long bouts with debilitating illness, alcoholism, and depression. Chief among these figures were Yeltsin's daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko; oil magnate Roman Abramovich; "oligarch" Boris Berezovsky; presidential administration chief Aleksandr Voloshin; powerful railroads minister and erstwhile first deputy prime minister Nikolai Aksenenko; and other senior administration officials, including Igor Shabdurasulov and Valentin Yumashev.19 Each of these figures owed their massive opportunities for wealth or power largely to Yeltsin and stood to lose everything and to face possible criminal prosecution should the PrimakovLuzhkov team capture power.

Luzhkov sensed the danger in pushing the Kremlin to desperation, but he also saw the electoral benefit to be gained from continuing to attack its corruption. Thus, while roundly criticizing the administration generally, he proposed various ways of providing Yeltsin, although Yeltsin alone, with future security. For example, in june 1999, he suggested that all retiring presidents should become members for life of the Federation Council, a status that would grant them immunity from criminal prosecution.20 Themselves unprotected, many of Yeltsin's closest circle of advisors and officials began devising ways to bring down the Fatherland-All Russia juggernaut. Their first set of attempts, trying to undermine gubernatorial cooperation by proposing multiple counter-coalitions for governors, had failed as of August 1999. Their more aggressive efforts in fall 1999 proved much more effective. These efforts are elaborated in what follows.